Lost in Radiance, Cast in Darkness, Trapped in Flesh
by Powersocke Prime
Summary: Part III of the Necromancer Cycle. These are three very small stories, divided into acts, telling of the different stages of cruelty that befall all who, to their misfortune, come into contact with the dreaded Necromancer whom these tales are about.


Act I - Lost in Radiance

She woke, engulfed by cruel light, surrounded by curious architecture reflecting the oppressive incandescence in this place. Where was she? How did she end up here?

Looking at the mirroring ground, she noticed her stark nakedness, covering herself in shame until it became apparent that, to her horror, no soul besides her seemed to be present in this glistening, crystalline wasteland. Wandering aimlessly, the bare feet's steps hollowly resonating throughout the white void and empty air, she feverishly tried to recount her last memories up to this point. It must've been yesterday, the female traveler thought to herself, when she went out to gather some herbs and plants in the woods of the Shadowy Grove.

Or was it a week ago? Maybe two? A month? She can't remember. What was her name? Who were her family? The more she tried to recall this information, the more it seemed to slip her squeamish mind in an act of mocking evasion.

It was strange how the young woman felt. Queerly disembodied and ethereal, yet at the same time flimsy as if made from brittle glass, a weak existence never before conceived.

She went forth, carefully treading the ice cold, light refracting path constructed from odd hexagonal shapes protruding out of a weird, opalescent vapour beneath her feet. Stopping for just a moment, listening closely for any sign of life in this iridescent hell. Silence. Only her hurried breathing and hesitant steps audible amidst bright nothingness. Utter panic crept up her spine. She began running, frantically looking for an egress, a door, an opening to leave this glassen plane of semi translucent emptiness. In vain.

Soon she discovered having been running in circles. And as blinding luminosity made it nearly impossible to discern any distinct features in the surrounding, ghostly landscape, at last she noticed a shiny mound along the level prismatic path in the crystal walls that seemed to drag on for eternity. Through that entryway she spied a peculiar bridge shining in the colourless mist engulfing it. In quest to uncover whence it lead, the hopelessly lost woman resolved to traverse the luminescent void looming aggravatingly ahead. It seemed as though time has stopped completely and space bent and contorted the further she went on the overpass, each step accompanied by a disquieting crack, posing a welcome, albeit foreboding change in the musical scarcity this alien plane presented.

Moving forward with ever greater determination, the hanging transcendent path stretching across a bottomless pit of lucid fog almost indefinitely in its terrible shimmering blight. Finally at its end, the young woman saw before her a towering vitreous structure rising up from the frigid ground, reflecting not the light of the surrounding blankness but giving off a familiar shine she knew well. At last, she thought, a portal to the outside world, away from this glowing netherworld!

Approaching the incredibly solid appearing anomaly, the poor soul pressed herself unrelentingly against the otherworldly glass in a futile effort to pass through. Mind shattering terror dispersed even the last vestiges of her fragile soul as she discovered in absolute disbelief that, indeed, it was the outside world she fancied in this abhorrent mirror, perilous memories of the last seconds of her life rushing back in an instant when she gazed upon her gruesomely mangled corpse, realizing that she was, irrevocably, lost in radiance.

Act II - Cast in Darkness

Endless, pointless wanderings had fiercely imprinted the undying image of the grim and bleak scenery onto his mind. Over time, he managed to fashion a crude shelter from the obsidian stone that dotted the landscape, likened to his former home, as best he could. And albeit the man's existence shifted from corporeal to præternaturally ethereal so many winters ago, his partly translucent form sports curious solid capabilities in this tenebrous place.

For reasons unbeknownst to him, the Aurbis fiercely keeping this secret under lock and key, never to be revealed to mortal souls such as his and, he thought, even the Aedra and Daedra must be puzzled at the premise of this strange quality presented in this dimension.

Just at which point did he go wrong, took a turn with terrible implications in the dark? It happened so very long ago. The rumours of this blasted creature of the abyss once fueled his determination as he set out to end its life. Little did the accursed, forgotten hero know what madness would meet him in those dank recesses of utmost terror. Alas, he failed, being used in a grueling play of comical bloodshed and inhumane puppets, laughing at him from every angle, making fun of his farcical attempt at justice. And so it was that this damned existence came to be, interminably caged, tied to this immortal plane of black-purple hue.

He sat down for a moment, admiring the brooding vistas of emptiness looming at the glowing horizon, feeling the vibrating air filled with dark magic in a barren, dead atmosphere of solitude. Lost amidst the streams of unlife continually pouring in from the sealed, cyclopean gate in its frightening antiquity, created in the earliest days of the Aurbis to punish all mortals who dared defy Yloren and his followers, both now faded into long forgotten legendry and obliviousness. An untold myth of the darkest age no man or mer was able to remember.

It has been so long since the day he failed tragically, the jetty-black monoliths reminding him of his fate as well as the fate of others every second he tried to draw breath without lungs and feel without heart for he was, ever since that day, cast in darkness.

Act III - Trapped in Flesh

The two of them decided to stick together - there is safety in numbers after all. In respect to what had previously transpired, they fared surprisingly well with what both had at their disposal. They still retained their magical abilities, if a bit weakened due to horribly broken bodies. He still hurled fireballs and lightning strikes, she still charmed her foes. But there is an element of despair in the tragic tale of how this terrible state of existence came to be and, upon reflection in regards to the earlier days of the curse, the odd duo used to be mad with fright and seemingly endless suffering, having not quite grasped their old lives being erased and cast into Oblivion, gone forever.

For days they would wail horrendously, sparking rumours in the indigenous folk of the smaller farmsteads and settlements around Windhelm. Whispers of queer screams heard at night. No one dared to attempt at placing these odious noises. And in fear, people retreated into their safe havens at dusk, in anguish of what might be lurking in the darkness beyond the borders of voids formed upon sunset.

Though, little did those rustics know that among the shadows there skulked in shame and agony two beings, not entirely unlike their own in nature, unknowing of what to do, where to seek help but certain that, should anybody peek a glance at these perversions of nature, artificially brought upon the Mundus by a cruel, cold and unforgiving hand of fate, they'd surely get themselves killed, robbed of any hope for absolution or vengeance.

They've been traveling far and wide, already accustomed to the numbing pain that rushed through their contorted, corporeal forms each second of their damnable life. Barely able to see with rotten eyes, the sensations of touch, smell and taste stolen by blinding fire. But even though their vision was clouded and hazy, obscuring the detail and colors of the beautiful world around them, in the end it was mercy, they told themselves each time they drank water from a lake or looked into the pristine sparkle of a freshly polished sword.

For it obfuscated the ghastly atrocious appearance of their hideously mangled bodies and warped faces, reminding them always of the night they got trapped in flesh.


End file.
